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Greg Wyshynski
As a service to followers who’ve a basic curiosity in WWE however won’t have watched a match in months, we’re blissful to offer this FAQ as a information to Survivor Collection: WarGames, on Saturday at 7 p.m. ET from Petco Park in San Diego. The Premium Dwell Occasion (PLE) will stream completely within the U.S. for followers with a subscription to the ESPN Unlimited plan — both instantly or by way of a standard pay TV bundle — on the ESPN App.
What’s a WarGames match once more?
We have come a good distance from the standard beginnings of Survivor Collection. Again within the day, it was all about multi-wrestler elimination tag-team matches, with mismatched companions and goofy staff names like “Roddy’s Rowdies” and “Clowns Are Us.” Wish to see Lex Luger staff with The Undertaker towards a staff of “foreigners” that included Roman Reigns’ cousin, Yokozuna? There’s a Survivor Series for that!
Since 2022, Survivor Collection has featured males’s and ladies’s WarGames matches contested between the 2 rings surrounded by a large metal cage with out a roof. The dearth of ceiling denotes the distinction between a “cage” and a “cell” in WWE parlance. Two contributors from every five-person staff begin the match. A brand new member from every staff enters the match at preset time intervals till all of the contributors are within the ring and the match formally begins. The match can solely be gained by pinfall or submission. Issues are likely to get violent pretty shortly.
Final yr’s match had Roman Reigns teaming together with his cousins, Jimmy and Jey Uso, whereas forging a fragile alliance with CM Punk, towards a staff with Bronson Reed on it. This yr’s match has … Reigns teaming together with his cousins Jimmy and Jey Uso, whereas forging a fragile alliance with Punk, towards a staff with Bronson Reed on it. However a lot extra!
Who’s battling within the males’s WarGames match?
Along with the Usos and Punk, the fifth member of Reigns’ staff this yr is undisputed WWE champion Cody Rhodes. And by that we imply “Rhodes’ staff.” Or is it world heavyweight champion CM Punk’s staff? As standard, galactic-sized egos try to coexist for the higher good, however Reigns has indicated he would not thoughts a shot at both Rhodes or Punk’s title when this WarGames enterprise is over.
On this case, “the higher good” is thrashing the snot out of The Imaginative and prescient, the faction led by the malevolent Paul Heyman. Please recall that The Imaginative and prescient was the group based by Seth Rollins after his epic heel turn towards Reigns and Punk at WrestleMania 41. The Imaginative and prescient is now Bron Breakker and Reed, who joined forces with Rollins solely to assault him months later, writing him off tv for no less than six months following a reported shoulder harm suffered at Crown Jewel. (Though after that swerve with the crutches, we’re side-eying any Rollins harm timeline.)
What is the sense of getting nefarious antagonists if Logan Paul is not a part of the staff, proper? The warmth magnet slugged Punk with a pair of brass knuckles on a latest episode of “Uncooked” earlier than aligning with Heyman’s group. Later, Paul and The Imaginative and prescient attacked Punk, with Rhodes and Jey Uso arriving to have his again towards their very own rivals. Punk issued the problem for a WarGames match, telling Heyman to go discover his staff. The following man he discovered technically wasn’t allowed to wrestle.
Drew McIntyre was suspended by “SmackDown” basic supervisor Nick Aldis for attacking a referee. However Heyman, smart man that he’s, found a loophole in his WarGames contract: He was allowed to decide on any member of the WWE roster to affix Workforce Imaginative and prescient. McIntyre, whereas suspended, remains to be a member of the roster, so he was on the staff and joined in an assault on the Usos, Rhodes and Punk.
On Nov. 17, Heyman’s staff added a formidable fifth: Brock Lesnar, who hit the “Uncooked” ring and gave Punk and Rhodes an all-expenses-paid journey to Suplex Metropolis. However simply as Lesnar was congratulating Heyman at ringside, Reigns’ music hit to the shock of the gang. One Superman punch on Lesnar later, and it was clear the percentages had been evened.
(Lesnar would later light up the internet on the “go residence” episode of “Uncooked,” slipping and falling throughout his pyro-filled intro. However we give him main props for the Simone Biles-esque somersault that undercut the botch.)
Whereas half the rivals on this WarGames match had been banging towards the cages a yr in the past, that is removed from a repeat affair. Heyman was aligned with Punk and Reigns in 2024 — not a lot now. Final yr’s match was within the final gasps of The Bloodline feud; this yr’s occasion finds The Imaginative and prescient, and particularly Breakker, extra ascendant. And due respect to Sami Zayn, who was the fifth member of the Punk-Reigns staff final yr, however any WarGames is extra compelling with Rhodes contained in the cages, contemplating his father, the late Dusty Rhodes, was the inventor of the format.
What concerning the girls’s WarGames match?
There are plenty of simmering rivalries fueling this match, however essentially the most compelling includes a former girls’s champion who hadn’t been seen within the WWE for practically a decade earlier than this yr: AJ Lee.
About two months in the past, Punk was feuding with WWE energy couple Rollins and Becky Lynch, who attacked Punk throughout a match towards Rollins at Clash In Paris. When Lynch and Punk dueled on the mic within the aftermath of that assault, followers started chanting “AJ Lee!” in reference to Punk’s real-life spouse. Lynch ultimately snapped again with “she does not work right here!” … till Lee began working there once more in September, skipping out of the again prefer it was 2013 once more, to the shock of Lynch.
This led to a blended tag-team match between the two couples at Wrestlepalooza, the place Lee pressured Lynch to submit with the Black Widow. Then got here the final word indignity: Lee distracted Lynch in a title match at Madison Sq. Backyard, permitting Maxxine Dupri to finish “The Man’s” Intercontinental Championship reign at a file 163 days.
The loss despatched Lynch right into a spiral. She accused referee Jessika Carr of being a “crooked” CM Punk fan. She threatened authorized motion, calling Lee an unlicensed supervisor at ringside and claiming the match was “rigged.”
One other feud within the girls’s WarGames match is between the Kabuki Warriors (Asuka and Kairi Sane) and their former teammate, Iyo Sky. The Warriors did not like that Sky wished to align with Rhea Ripley, which ultimately led them to activate Sky and assault each Sky and Ripley.
In the meantime, Charlotte Aptitude and Alexa Bliss — the rivals-to-besties who gained the Girls’s Tag Workforce Championship at SummerSlam in August — had been concerned in a feud with Nia Jax and, ultimately, NXT call-up Lash Legend. Legend, a former WNBA participant, attacked Bliss throughout a match between Aptitude and Jax and later helped Jax price them the titles in a match towards the Kabuki Warriors, the brand new champs. Sky and Ripley returned from harm to rescue Bliss and Aptitude from a four-on-two beatdown, main Ripley — sporting a facemask after breaking her nose in a match final month — to subject the problem to WarGames.
Initially, Aptitude refused to play Ripley’s reindeer video games, citing their lengthy historical past as rivals as a motive to not belief her. However because of a wood desk, dramatic music and temper lightning, the two called a truce after Ripley mentioned there was nobody she’d fairly go to warfare with. Which, admittedly, sounded a bit confrontational, so she adopted that up with “there is no one I might fairly stand side-by-side with” in a warfare.
Anyway, Aptitude was like “OK” as a result of flattery will get you in all places.
There is a ton of expertise on this match, with high-fliers and energy wrestlers. However it’s onerous to not suppose that this WarGames match will come all the way down to Lynch and Lee.
What concerning the Girls’s World Championship?
WWE girls’s champion Jade Cargill is not on the Survivor Collection card — though she may need some enterprise with girls’s United States champion Chelsea Inexperienced on the horizon. Girls’s world title holder Stephanie Vaquer, she of the scary ram horns, defends her title towards former ally Nikki Bella at Survivor Collection.
Vaquer and Bella had been a tag staff feuding with the Judgment Day’s Roxanne Perez and Raquel Rodriguez. Vaquer put over the truth that she was teaming with a Divas’ Revolution legend. Because the saying goes, by no means kind a makeshift tag staff together with your idols. Bella turned on Vaquer, attacking her with the title belt then doffing her crimson shirt to disclose an EVIL BLACK SHIRT beneath, like she went from nWo WolfPac to Hollywood instantly!
Whoever might have seen a betrayal like this coming from Nikki Bella? You already know, besides her twin sister, Brie?
What is the newest on the John Cena retirement tour?
Survivor Collection is the ultimate PLE for Cena earlier than his retirement match on Dec. 13 at Saturday Night time’s Primary Occasion in Washington, D.C. Enjoyable reality: He first appeared on a WWE pay-per-view over 23 years in the past, defeating Chris Jericho at Vengeance 2002.
Cena enters Survivor Collection as Grand Slam Champion after his Intercontinental Championship victory over Dominik Mysterio on Nov. 10, successful every of the singles and tag staff championships throughout his WWE profession. That victory came in Boston, not removed from Cena’s hometown of West Newbury. He agreed to present “Soiled Dom” a rematch in Mysterio’s hometown of San Diego at Survivor Collection.
As one would possibly count on, Mysterio has loved trolling Cena forward of their title rematch. Witness his shenanigans at “Uncooked” on Monday, when he popped the gang by enjoying Cena’s theme music solely to have a Micro Wrestling Federation wrestler dressed as Cena emerge from the again. When “little” John went off script within the ring, Dom gave him a boot to the chest. Simply in case you had been frightened, Dom could not change into any extra loathsome.
Whereas Cena has this title protection at Survivor Collection, there’s an ongoing “The Final Time Is Now” event within the WWE to find out who will face “The Final Actual Champion” in his retirement match.
Do you know that Gunther, who’s within the remaining 4 of the event, is the longest-reigning Intercontinental champion ever and has by no means earlier than confronted Cena in a match? Huh, fancy that.
What is the greatest factor to look at at Survivor Collection?
The factor to look at for this Saturday is the factor that has at all times made Survivor Collection matches intriguing: “Can they coexist?”
That not solely goes for Aptitude and Ripley within the girls’s match, however the holy trinity of self-importance that’s Rhodes, Punk and Reigns — three wrestlers united by a typical enemy and doubtlessly divided by their very own self pursuits. In the long run, the actual survivors are those who can examine their egos on the cage door. And clearly, not everybody in these WarGames will survive them.
